As well now as any other time." Stanford bowed and waited.
"You have not resided in this house for so many weeks without hearing of the invalid upstairs, whom Ogden attends, who never appears in our midst, and about whom all in the house are more or less curious ?" "Mr.Richards ?" said Stanford, surprised.
"Yes, Mr.Richards; you have heard of him.

It was Mr.Richards whom you saw with Kate last night." Reginald Stanford dropped the paper-knife he had been drumming with, and stared blankly at Captain Danton.
"Mr.Richards!" he echoed; "Mr.Richards, who is too ill to leave his room!" "Not now," said Captain Danton, calmly; "he was when he first came here.
You know what ailed Macbeth--a sickness that physicians could not cure.
That is Mr.Richards' complaint--a mind diseased.

Remorse and terror are that unhappy young man's ailments and jailers." There was a dead pause.

Reginald Stanford, still "far wide," gazed at his father-in-law-elect, and waited for something more satisfactory.
"It is not a pleasant story to tell," Captain Danton went on, in a subdued voice; "the story of a young man's folly, and madness, and guilt; but it must be told.

The man you saw last night is barely twenty-three years of age, but all the promise of his life is gone; from henceforth he can be nothing more than a hunted outcast, with the stain of murder on his soul." "Good heavens!" exclaimed his hearer; "and Kate walks with such a man, alone, and at midnight ?" "Yes," said Kate's father, proudly "and will again, please Heaven.